True story: when I was a boy, I loved pink. The color of sunset! My teacher told me I couldn’t like pink, I was a boy. So I shrugged, and picked orange. Sunrise! My mom, hearing about this, was wonderfully furious.

To this day, orange is probs my fave color.

~

Egads. Money-hungry plastic-makin’ toy manufacturers in charge of who likes pink and whether women play with cars or boys with guns? I’d rather have children learn from loving parents, fellow children, and honor their own predilections.

Crystal Smith @ The Achilles Effect (a site that examines how young boys’ understanding of masculinity affects their perception of femininity) culled a list of words from 59 toy spots directed at either boys or girls and plugged them into Wordle to produce a word cloud illustrating which words are used most often in ads targeting boys (top) versus words used most often in ads targeting girls.

“This is not an exhaustive record,” Smith says, “it’s really just a starting point, but the results certainly are interesting.”…

1536304 Responseshttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.elephantjournal.com%2F2011%2F04%2Ftoys-teach-children-about-gender%2FDo+Toys+teach+Children+about+Gender%3F2011-04-13+05%3A23%3A11Waylon+Lewishttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.elephantjournal.com%2F%3Fp%3D153630 to “Do Toys teach Children about Gender?”